SYMPHORO

Excerpt/Teaser From An Unpublished Novel

Symphorophilia: A paraphilia involving sexual arousal from staging and watching disasters.

An entry from a Journal:

I am still developing my secrets. Like an ancient spider I dream of the day I fulfill my own web, my own shadow. I will want for nothing because I want nothing. Each rib I study. Each nook, each little particle. Like life, I inspect this realm with the pleasure of the senses. It is a closeted type of chaos. With a shadow molded from clay, with a feeble body and a weak hand, I attempt to write. I want to holler out my words, yet the clay hand crumbles and at first, just the tips, then the palm, all the way up to the face, and it shatters all of that, too. So, I can only make attempts. Frozen in the void, the soft chasm opens up at noon—it is a vortex of a window at the golden hour. Here, I rally at the men with my fists of true bone. And the onset of the tragedy comes, blinkers, flashes in a vision. I have held my mother and father in contempt. Words, phrases, ruminations. I conceptualize them fully in each line of Ricardo—the poet that understands the women.

I suppose that's all you can call it. But what a world where one ought to feel understood—I rest. I know you feel it, too. And again, the rude vortex of time— such a whirlwind of a ride.

Well, Ricardo and I!

I daydream this, of course, and all the things that would go along with it. Like Ricardo's love and living like poor poets. The place in Montebelle—where all the roads are cobblestone, and the tide still rises and floods the city with ocean water.

To be in Montebelle in ‘32 would be the essence of the life I want to live. I could say, with Ricardo, and his studded chin, his brutish appeal, I could say, I could dare say—I would be happy. Montebelle—something for the senses—all of them. That is my daydream. The fresh smell of the clean ocean, where you can see your feet in crystalline waters. Every evening the boats would line up to sell their fresh catch right there on the dock, the ultimate delight—I see myself and Ricardo. We would go to the dock for bread, fish, wine, and cheese. Then, we would rent out a boat for hours. The sun would set, and you would go far, far out into the water. Far enough to watch the city of Montebelle turn its yellow lights on at sunset, which pop like soft, orange ochre balls—and whose reflections are dancing on the dark waters, gracefully, like a string of floating pearls all aflame.

R. 

SYMPHORO is an unpublished by novel. Throughout the book, many chapters are punctuated by obscure journal entries.

JSV
2024